JC's Blog

Cleaning the kitchen is never going to be as fun as, say, a weekend at the beach. Or even as fun as cleaning your room. But it's gotta get done because living in a vermin-free home is an important part of being a successful adult. And even if you don't have a single cleaning product in your home, you can still totally make your kitchen sparkle. Plus, there's a certain feeling of pride you'll get when you manage to clean your oven with nothing but lemon juice and a rubber band.

Quick note on safety: Many essential oils are highly concentrated and can pose a danger to cats and dogs. If you have pets, do some research on ingredients to avoid. Here's a great place to start.

Because it's cold enough not to smell bad, the fridge is often forgotten when it comes to keeping the kitchen clean. But that's where you keep your food, so don't let it get gross. The bad news is, yes, you will definitely have to take everything out of it. The good news? All you need to do after that is give everything a quick spray with this mixture of two parts water and one part white vinegar (plus some lemon oil to make it smell nice), and wipe it out. â¨

Disposable cleansing wipes can get pretty expensive and are bad for the Earth to boot. But it's surprisingly simple to make your own reusable ones with an old T-shirt, equal parts vinegar and filtered water, and some drops of essential oils. Bonus: They smell awesome.

Wooden cutting boards that see a lot of use can have a grimy build-up on the surface. To freshen up your cutting board, halve a lemon, pour a generous amount of salt on the board, and use the lemon as if it were a sponge to scrub off any old residue. Next, use a scraper to scape up the salt and lemon mixture. Finally, rinse with water and set out to dry.

Frequent use and a narrow opening make coffee pots of all kinds hard to clean. Happily, all it takes is a quick vinegar rinse to freshen up a coffee pot and remove built-up coffee and water stains. Running a mixture of vinegar and water through your coffee maker can also freshen drip machines.

The ease with which microwaved food explodes leads to a lot of microwave messes that need to be cleaned. And since you'll be making food you want to eat in that microwave, you'll want a natural, totally easy way to clean it. And you can! Put a wet sponge inside, spray the whole inside with water mixed with essential oils, and microwave for two minutes. Let the sponge cool, use it to wipe everything up, and you're done.

Since you can't use soap on cast iron, clean and protect your cast iron skillet by cleaning any gunk with a mixture of olive oil and salt. Simply pour a tablespoon of olive oil into the skillet, add coarse sea salt, and scrub with a cloth. Once the skillet is clean, wipe out the salt and finish with a thin layer of olive oil.

It may not have occurred to you that your dishwasher needs to be cleaned, seeing as how it is a thing for cleaning itself, but in fact every now and again it's a good idea to freshen things up. Getting a fresher dishwasher is as simple as running a cycle with vinegar and another to rinse. Easy!

Strictly speaking, this isn't a kitchen hack since it's using cleaning products for their intended purpose (cleaning), but Bon Ami and Bar Keeper's Friend are two relatively obscure cleaners you should have in your kitchen. Bon Ami works wonders on enamel and Bar Keeper's Friend is great for stainless steel, both of which feature prominently in well-appointed contemporary kitchens.

Valentine's Day is often referred to by those who aren't in relationships as SAD -- SIngles Awareness Day. But flying solo on February 14 needn't be an unpleasant experience. Here are 10 reasons it's actually quite enjoyable, courtesy of Thought Catalog:

You can buy yourself your own crappy drugstore chocolate.

No stress about finding the perfect gift.

You can do literally whatever you want to do.

You can go out and get really drunk with your friends if you want to.

You can stay in and wear your pajamas all day with your hair in a dirty bun.

You can have your friends as Valentines.

You can watch every sappy romance on TV and make as much fun of them as you want to.

Alternately, you can watch every sappy romance on TV and cry your guts out.

An artist named Nickolay Lamm has created a "Normal Barbie" that has the body of an average American woman and comes with add-ons like acne, scars and stretch marks. The dolls, which were designed last year and are now available for purchase, are intended to show kids that everyone has flaws and that they shoud be embraced. The stickers allow children to customize their dolls by adding freckles, stitches and grass stains, among other features. Lamm also made a video that shows how second graders respond to a realistically-proportioned fashion doll. The response is overwhelmingly positive, and includes comments like "I think she's really pretty," and "She looks like my sister."

TripAdvisor users have named the Art Institute of Chicago the best museum in the world in the site's annual Travelers' Choice awards. The global museum list, released yesterday, ranks 25 of the world's best museums based on an algorithm that factors quality and quantity of TripAdvisor reviews over a 12-month period. The other American museums to crack the rankings' top 10 include the Getty Center in L.A. and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here are the top-ranked U.S. institutions on the list

Ready to take gluttony to a whole new level? Then check out Buzzfeed's list of 23 foods you absolutely must try deep-fried. Here are several of their picks (see the link for the full list, as well as for recipes):

Looking to put your coffee addiction on the backburner for awhile? Thankfully, there are other ways to energize during a workday. In fact, FastCo argues that the following six tactics are actually better for your productivity than a cuppa joe:

New York-area mom Sharon Standifird was fed up with her kids ignoring her phone calls, so she decided to do something about it. Eventually, Standifird developed an app called Ignore No More, which enables parents to effectively lock their child's phone from afar if they won't pick up. If a kid wants the password required to regain access to her usual array of smartphone accoutrements, she has to call home to get it. “Bradley needs to call me because I’m the person that has the unlock password,” Standifird says, in reference to her son. “It takes away texting, it takes away the gaming, it takes away calling their friends.” However, the child will still be able to call 911, should an emergency arise.